Story: French

Page 1. Explorers and missionaries

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Explorers

The first French arrival was Captain Jean François Marie de Surville, who brought the St Jean Baptiste on a trans-Pacific trading and exploratory expedition in 1769. His first sighting of New Zealand was of the Hokianga heads; from there he sailed around North Cape to Doubtless Bay. Initially he and his crew got on well with Māori in the area, but he eventually left under a shadow of misunderstanding. Wrongly believing Ngāti Kahu had stolen the ship’s boat, he burned whare and kidnapped a chief, Ranginui. When de Surville sailed for Peru, he took Ranginui with him. The chief died of scurvy during the voyage.

Ngāti Wiwi

Some Māori are believed to have referred to early French explorers as ‘Ngati Wiwi’, after hearing them saying ‘oui oui’ (‘yes yes’, denoting agreement).  A 2004 symposium on the Pompallier mission in Russell (and a subsequent book) was called ‘The French place in the Bay of Islands: Te Urunga Mai o te Iwi Wiwi’ in recognition of this.

In May 1772, Marc Joseph Marion du Fresne sailed the Mascarin into the Bay of Islands. His party made scientific observations, and traded and socialised with Māori. A few weeks later, however, du Fresne and 24 others were murdered. Hundreds of Māori were killed in retaliation. There are several theories to explain what the French did to anger Māori. They are known to have fished in sacred waters, thereby violating tapu, and they were also unaware of how their actions affected local politics and tribal rivalries. Whatever the real reason, Māori remained distrustful of ‘the tribe of Marion’ for years.

The first truly scientific French expedition was led by Louis Isidore Duperrey on the Coquille, which reached the Bay of Islands in April 1824. Duperrey surveyed the bay, met the Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika, and later published his observations.

Also on board was Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville, who led an expedition which reached New Zealand in 1827. From the west coast of the South Island he sailed towards Cook Strait, naming French Pass, D’Urville Island and Croisilles Harbour. He visited for a third time in 1840. Like other French explorers, Dumont d’Urville made a major contribution to scientific knowledge of New Zealand. Included in these exploratory missions were French artists, whose works form a rich visual record of early-19th-century New Zealand.

French whalers appeared in the 1830s, with most working off Banks Peninsula and Otago until the 1840s. Some eventually settled.

Novel discoveries

The voyages of Tasman and others inspired French writers from as early as 1681. Voltaire, Alexandre Dumas the elder and Jules Verne all drew on accounts of New Zealand contact.

The explorer Dumont d’Urville wrote an unpublished novel about New Zealand that was found in manuscript form after his death in 1842. Les Zélandais: histoire australienne is based on his encounters with Māori in 1824. Set in Northland, it relates the fortunes of the people of Tiami (Taiāmai) and their chief. Dumont d’Urville depicts them sympathetically, as their lives are about to be changed dramatically by the arrival of Europeans.

Missionaries

The French had a major influence on the Catholic Church in New Zealand. The Pacific was allocated to French missionaries by the Pope in 1829, and in 1835 the western portion – including New Zealand –was made a parish. Bishop Jean Baptiste François Pompallier was sent out to head the mission and arrived in the Hokianga in 1838. The first bishop of any Christian denomination in New Zealand, he was to be the leading light of the local Catholic Church for the next 30 years.

Pompallier and his missionaries from the order of the Society of Mary (Marists) faced poverty, hardship, and opposition from Protestant missionaries and Māori who distrusted the French. But they quickly learned English and Māori, and in 10 years 5,000 people were baptised. Mission stations were established from north Auckland to Akaroa on Banks Peninsula.

For some Māori, becoming Catholic was a gesture of dissatisfaction with Protestant missionaries and the British Crown. But Catholicism did not remain associated with protest for long. During the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s, Pompallier abandoned the Māori mission and condemned the indigenous Pai Mārire religious movement. The new focus of the Catholic Church was to minister to the country’s Europeans.

The gold rushes of the 1860s took the priests to Southland to work with mining communities. French Marists were a significant part of the clergy in Wellington and Canterbury until around 1885, and remained active in these regions until the 1930s. They made a substantial contribution to Catholic education.

The missionaries, and later the Sisters of Mercy, accomplished ground-breaking welfare work with both Māori and Pākehā. As well as churches and chapels, they built schools, hospitals and orphanages. The most well-known missionary was Suzanne Aubert, who arrived in 1860 and founded the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion.

In the 2020s, some Catholic orders maintain contact with France.

How to cite this page:

Tessa Copland, 'French - Explorers and missionaries', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/french/page-1 (accessed 19 March 2024)

Story by Tessa Copland, published 8 Feb 2005, reviewed & revised 1 Feb 2016